1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a television broadcast selection method and, more particularly, to a channel selection method capable of facilitating channel selection by storing broadcast channels and displaying the stored broadcast channels on a screen.
Korean Patent Application No. 92-15428 is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In one conventional channel storage method used in conjunction with a color television, a memory device is simply used for storing and erasing particular channels in response to operation of a storage key and an erase key. According to this method, the channel is then selected using an up/down key or similar channel selection key. It should also be noted that in the color television implementing this method, an automatic program key must be separately provided. Operation of the automatic program key permits automatic detection of broadcast channels by way of signal presence detector so that detected broadcast signals may be stored in the memory and selected as above.
A more recent method of a conventional channel storage and selection method is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,144,438, wherein the broadcast channel by which the broadcast signal can be input by operation of the above-described automatic program key is automatically selected and stored in a memory. At the same time, the video image of the corresponding channel is stored in a separate memory. Then, the channel selection is performed using a picture-in-picture (PIP) function, by which the main picture screen is divided into a plurality of sub-screens to display a plurality of broadcast channel signals.
However, when using either of the above methods, a user must continuously utilize the channel selection key to verify the stored channels. Also, since the average user typically has trouble with the procedure for storing and/or erasing of channels, the user tends to use only the up/down key to select a desired channel out of all the available channels.
Moreover, when using the PIP function, since the respective video images of the broadcast programs in the respective broadcast channels are displayed in a plurality of sub-screens on the main screen, channel selection is very convenient. However, since this requires a separate apparatus for performing the PIP function, production cost increases and the overall structure becomes more complicated.
The present invention was motivated by a desire to overcome the above-mentioned disadvantages in the prior art.